7 Steps To Improve The Customer Experience In Call Centers

The experience of a client (CX) when communicating with the call center of a company can be the differentiating factor between loyalty to the user or the latter making the decision to change a competitor. A positive experience can lead to a purchase. A Forbes article highlights that customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than organizations that don’t.

According to a Walker study, in 2020, the customer experience is expected to exceed price and product as a key brand differentiator.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that companies have realized that a high-quality customer experience is an important criterion for success.

How To Improve The Customer Experience In Contact Centers

There is always room for CX improvement in call centers with a wide variety of different contact points where a user connects with their brand. At each point, there is something that can be done to improve the customer experience. The key is to go step by step.

1) Know Your Customer

The sales team already knows a lot about their customers, including their demographics and expectations. But to go one step further, the call center customer service team must know its users personally.

For example, it is important to put a face on your client by creating a profile of a person that allows the contact center team to imagine exactly who they are communicating with, day after day.

This means creating a ‘buyer persona’ profile, which is an ideal customer archetype of a service or product, taking into account specific sociodemographic data and information on aspects such as their online, personal, professional conduct and the relationship with the company that offers a product or service. Thus, the customer becomes a real person. In fact, the customer experience in the contact centers improves the quality of the information they know about their users.

2) Pay Attention To The Customer Journey

A customer at different stages of the sales cycle will interact with agents in different ways. To learn how to improve the customer experience in the call center, you must interact with users in a way that is based on where they are on their journey.

For example, a new customer who has just been introduced to your brand should receive a more generic and welcoming greeting, compared to someone who has already purchased. The interaction should be much more personalized and specific to your needs.

3) Develop Emotional Connections With Customers

Users want to interact and shop at brands that share their values, care about what they want, and understand who they are. This requires the call center team to develop emotional intelligence to connect with callers.

Agents must move away from classic and robotic customer service and instead implement emotionally smarter tactics to improve CX in contact centers. For example, the team could implement:

• Storytelling, which helps the customer to better relate to the agent and the brand.
• Personalization.
• Surprise, like a free update or a new product.
• Loyalty rewards for returning customers.

4) Reduce Customer Effort

Simplicity is the best. Customers want one-click payments, instant communication, next-day shipping, fast service, and they expect the same simplicity from their customer experience in call centers.

To improve the customer experience in a contact center, as well as the quality control of the call center, the following factors must be considered:

• Request the customer’s phone number and offer a callback in case of disconnection.
• Improve an agent’s understanding of customer questions to decrease the need for the user to repeat themselves.
• Frequently asked questions and the possibility of self-service and additional information.
• Provide additional materials after a call to supplement the service.
• Do everything possible to solve the problem during the first call.

5) Request Comments From Your Customers And Listen To Them

Customers want to know that agents listen to their wants and needs. The best way to do this is to solicit their feedback and open a dialogue about what they like and dislike about your brand, call center, and customer service representatives.

For example, customers can be asked to fill out a short survey after each interaction or end of each call with a question about resolving the query and what could be improved for next time. The more you know about the current customer experience in the call centers, the better.

6) Train Your Team

The team is the most valuable asset when it comes to improving the call center customer experience. How agents are trained to manage user interactions will determine how they respond to your brand.

Online training can be offered using multimedia material, through questionnaires and through personalized attention.

7) Commit Where And How Customers Want

To improve the customer experience in call centers, you may need to change where and when you interact with users. A phone call may not be the best channel for every customer. Instead, considering interacting with customers on their channels of choice, whether it’s through email, social media, live chat, or blog comments, may be a better option, depending on the needs of each user.

To improve the customer experience in a contact center, you must pay close attention to the user and how and where they interact with your brand. It is the union of both that makes the difference.